Diana Bishop is related to two Canadian heroes — one public, one private.

She is the granddaughter of First World War flying ace Billy Bishop, a Canadian legend whose captured a place in history.

And she is the daughter of Arthur Bishop, a respected author and pilot whose exploits during the Second World War were always compared to those of his more famous father.

In a new memoir, Living Up To A Legend — My Adventures With Billy Bishop’s Ghost, Diana Bishop writes about the mixed blessing of growing up with an iconic relative.

Billy Bishop had the good sense to die relatively young, at 62 — nobody wants to see their heroes fade away into old age — so Diana Bishop never knew him. Still, his was a larger-than-life presence that made itself felt on a daily basis for her family.

As a little girl, Bishop basked in the reflected glory, even sneaking her grandfather’s famed war medals out of the house for a show-and-tell at school.

As she got older, however, Bishop began to understand what it was like for her dad, Arthur, to live his whole life in the large shadow cast by Billy Bishop — who was himself imperfect, as the author discovered. Living Up To A Legend is Bishop’s story of public glory and private struggle, a rich, warts-’n’-all memoir about family that is also an homage to her parents’ generation.

And the book is a social history, capturing the pre-feminist status of women and the benign neglect characteristic of many a baby boomer childhood — TV’s Ward and June Cleaver notwithstanding.

It’s a tough, funny, touching memoir and a great read.

Diana Bishop is a well-known Canadian journalist who spent 20 years as a TV news correspondent (and independent film producer) for CBC, CTV, Global Television, and NBC News. She now heads up The Success Story Program, a personal branding business.

In honour of Friday’s Billy Bishop Day — this year being the 100th anniversary of the combat expedition that earned him a Victoria Cross — we spoke to Bishop in Toronto:

•What got you started on this memoir?

“I was writing short stories about my father, because he was such a character and I thought, ‘I need to write some of these things down.’ But when I started, I saw that I was kind of angry. I didn’t get that when I was younger, and I realized there was more to it than I thought. So I talked to a well-known editor about this, and she said, ‘You grew up in a family that revered heroes. A lot of what you’re talking about is that you’ve always had a built-in hero in your family.’ And Billy Bishop was our Superman! I didn’t need Batman or anything, I had him. And because he died when I was only three, he was a mythical figure for me … I’ve always been interested in the hero culture, and why we need heroes, especially now, when we’re so desperate for hero leadership.”

•But admiring a hero from afar was very different from living with one?

“I grew up when my grandfather’s name, when Billy Bishop was still such an enduring brand — there were cafes and streets and stamps, we went to the openings of buildings and to events, to Remembrance Day ceremonies, to aviation shows — he was always there. He was somebody who I felt was always around.

“And my father, by comparison, as I figured out when I was writing the book, became my anti-hero. Because he was human! And he was struggling with all sorts of things I didn’t understand as a little girl. And he wasn’t very kind to my mother. He drank and could be abusive. And none of this we understood. It was all very shameful and nobody talked about it. Of course, it was happening in a lot of families, but none of us knew that.”

•Yes, all those families were expected to adjust overnight after the Second World War?

“You wouldn’t believe the responses I’ve had, the e-mails from all over the country and from the U.S. and they’re overwhelmingly supportive. So many people say, ‘My father and mother never talked about it, and we all knew he was struggling.’ What I discovered, as I was going along, is that I really didn’t know what they went through … Secrets and shame — that’s what everyone has an element of … I think those [veterans of the two world wars] are the two most stoic generations of all time. I don’t know how they did it and kept going. With the book I’m honouring my grandfather, but my father, too. I had to find that place to find the hero in him, for me to get the healing I needed … He went on to write 11 books on military history. He really distinguished himself.”

•Can you talk about the process of writing this memoir? Was it cathartic?

“I was impressed by Silken Laumann’s memoir, Unsinkable, and by Jeannette Walls’ The Glass Castle and Plum Johnson’s They Left Us Everything. With a memoir, you know somebody is going to read it. [Laughs] But you don’t really know — I don’t think I was ready for how exposed I feel. Writing a memoir is, by definition, a healing journey for the writer, and you don’t come out of it unchanged. It’s a fragile, vulnerable place, because you’re no longer able to hide behind the things that got you there. But you know, I’m really honouring my father and my grandfather for what they went through. The point of the book is that I am honouring my heritage. I’m blessed to have that heritage, but there’s always a price to be paid for the truth.”

Attention Owen Sound

From June 9 -11, you have a rare opportunity to see Billy Bishop’s war medals and one of his uniforms, which have been lent to the Billy Bishop Museum (housed in Bishop’s Owen Sound childhood home) by the Canadian War Museum.

“It’s very unusual. They don’t let those medals out,” says Diana Bishop, granddaughter of the legendary First World War flying ace.

Those medals, which Ms. Bishop once carried to school in a brown paper bag, are insured for many millions.

Diana Bishop may be the granddaughter of a legendary war hero, but her memoir will be familiar territory for many baby boomers.

Bishop grew up zig-zagging between her pride in the Billy Bishop legend and her confusion over her own household — with a father who drank and was sometimes a charming raconteur, sometimes angry and remote. The memoir is about Bishop’s struggle to get to know and understand her own father, Arthur, something she achieved in the process of caring for him at the end of his life.

Bishop writes about a childhood spent with her beloved younger brother, her fascinating grandmothers (Billy Bishop’s wife was Timothy Eaton’s granddaughter) and her patient, long-suffering mother.

On her way to a highly accomplished adult life — she and her brother used to joke about having a drive to succeed they dubbed ‘Billy Bishop Syndrome’ — the author dealt with her own anxiety and health issues.

This Week's Flyers

Comments

We encourage all readers to share their views on our articles and blog posts. We are committed to maintaining a lively but civil forum for discussion, so we ask you to avoid personal attacks, and please keep your comments relevant and respectful. If you encounter a comment that is abusive, click the "X" in the upper right corner of the comment box to report spam or abuse. We are using Facebook commenting. Visit our FAQ page for more information.